January 30 2018 marked the 50th anniversary of the launch of the “Tet offensive” in 1968 by North Vietnam forces and the National Liberation Front against the South Vietnam Army and the US military presence.

The offensive not only facilitated the changing public opinion in the USA on the Vietnam War and heralded revolutionary unrest throughout the world in 1968, twenty years later, the idea of a Tet-like offensive resurfaced in Ireland.

This piece will argue, however, that rather than a credible scenario, it was a wide-spread myth among the Irish Republican prisoners’ population that facilitated the departure of the IRA from Armalite to the ballot box. [Mehr lesen…]

The fact that Irish Republican prisoners are held in British prisons in the North of Ireland causes conflict for the Northern Ireland Prison Service. Irish Republicans are Irish Nationalists, thus, their national identity is suppressed during their imprisonment in the British State. [Mehr lesen…]

I recently stumbled over following sentence on a widely read Irish blog: “Cumann na mBan (CnamB) has been subject to several splits down through the years.” This comment was made in response to claims that Cumann na mBan “never split.” This is an assumption I also regularly repeat in my own writings on the organisation. The sentence that Cumann na mBan had “several splits down through the years” suggests that various organisations have emerged from the Cumann na mBan tradition. [Mehr lesen…]

Newly released British Government Papers reignited the debate on the 1981 Hunger Strikes in the H-Blocks of HMP Maze/Long Kesh. This debate started a few years ago with Richard O’Rawe’s publication of Blanketmen. [Mehr lesen…]

Although the Northern Irish Troubles are internationally recognised as a settled conflict, there are currently more than one hundred Republican prisoners held in prisons on the Irish isle. A complete black-out by international media outlets makes them Europe’s forgotten prisoners.

A Malaysian born Irish Republican prisoners who has served his minimum five-year term has lost his legal challenge to being kept in prison. [Mehr lesen…]